At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

June 11, 2015

(++++) YESTERDAY’S HORRORS, TODAY’S RESONANCE

The Life and Death of Adolf
Hitler. By James Cross Giblin. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $9.99.

Alex’s Wake: The Tragic Voyage of
the St. Louis to Flee Nazi Germany,
and a Grandson’s Journey of Love and Remembrance. By Martin Goldsmith. Da
Capo. $15.99.

First published in 2002 and
now available in a well-priced paperback edition, James Cross Giblin’s The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler was
and is the best biography of the Nazi leader intended for young readers. In
fact, it is good enough so that adults unfamiliar with Hitler’s rise and the
factors that led to World War II will gain as much from it as will their
children. Although clearly judgmental and condemnatory, Giblin does his best to
present the history of Hitler and his movement as objectively as possible, not
denying the future Führer his
moments of heroism and even tenderness, particularly in his earlier life and
through his service in World War I. There are occasional speculations here
about what might have been: Giblin recounts how Hitler, hiding after the
unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch at the home of intensely committed backer Helene
Hanfstaengel, learned that he was soon to be arrested, “panicked and said, ‘Now
all is lost – there’s no use going on!’ He reached for his revolver. ‘What do
you think you’re doing?’ Helene said. She grabbed his hand and wrenched the
revolver away from him. …One can’t help but wonder what would have happened if
Helene Hanfstaengel had not been such an ardent supporter of Hitler and his
Nazi Party. He might have acted on the impulse to kill himself – and the world
would have been spared the agony that lay ahead.” True – or, in a parallel
universe, the Nazis might have triumphed and Hitler’s post-war rule might have taken
unexpected turns (this is, in essence, the plot of Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel,
The Man in the High Castle).

Most of The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, however, sticks to facts rather
than speculation, and the book is strong for that very reason. The information
on Hitler’s youth is absorbing, including his poverty – after his imprisonment
in 1923, his cell “was far larger and more comfortable” than places where he
had lived before. The way in which Mussolini’s takeover of Italy influenced
Hitler’s own strategy is clearly explained, and the portraits of Hitler’s inner
circle are done very well, with admirable clarity and lack of emotion in the
writing. Explanations are given when available – Herman Göring, for example, was “a World War
One ace who was looking for a cause and found it in the Nazi Party.” When
reasons for Hitler’s success are less certain, Giblin simply mentions what
happened – for example, Hitler’s increasingly strident anti-Jewish tirades
after 1919. Giblin shows how the seeds of World War II were planted after World
War I through the Versailles Treaty, which “aroused such tremendous resentment
in Germany, and created such painful hardships for the German people, that many
observers felt it was counterproductive.” Yet Giblin makes it clear that it was
Hitler and his closest advisors who took advantage of that resentment and
deliberately stoked it to the highest possible levels, fanning fears of
ascendant Communism and long-simmering suspicion and dislike of Jews into a
potent mix of hatred and determination that led to a long and disastrous war. The
Nazis’ battlefield successes and ultimate failure are clearly discussed,
although certainly not in detail – that is not the purpose of Giblin’s book.
Hitler’s death, the mysteries that still surround it (the location of his
remains is still unknown), and the postwar trials of the Nazi elite are all
well-presented. And the little things that make history so fascinating are
ever-present here: Hitler’s love of dogs, the circumstances under which he
became a vegetarian, the fact that the Nazis earned considerable praise in the
pre-war years from such towering literary figures as George Bernard Shaw and
Gertrude Stein (she proposed giving Hitler the Nobel Peace Prize). There are
occasional missteps in the book: for example, World War I reparations are given
as $32 billion without saying whether that is in current dollars, and the book
comments on the state of things “even today, almost sixty years after
[Hitler’s] death” – an inaccuracy traceable to the original publication date,
but certainly not clarified by a back cover that says “almost seventy years
after his death.” Still, these minor matters in no way detract from the power
and effectiveness of this well-researched and well-written biography of a man
who still personifies evil to many, and whose life is therefore worth studying
and understanding – if only to try, perhaps vainly, to ensure that his like
never rises to a level of such power again.

As memories of the horrors
of World War II fade along with the generation that fought it, it is the
personal stories of people affected by the war that become increasingly
important for those determined that no such conflict will recur. This may be a
vain hope – it was World War I, after all, that was dubbed “the war to end war”
– but it is a hope, and one to which
the continuing release of books about details of World War II contributes.
Certainly for those with a strong personal stake in the war’s events and its
outcome, these books can be salutary experiences. But they are very clearly
niche productions – for many of today’s readers, a war that ended 70 years ago
is simply not a significant factor in everyday life. Alex’s Wake, originally published last year with the subtitle A Voyage of Betrayal and a Journey of
Remembrance, and now available in paperback, is a perfect example of a
(+++) book written by someone with a strong personal attachment to wartime
events, for readers feeling an equally strong involvement in the war. The book
chronicles the personal travels of author Martin Goldsmith, who apparently
feels guilty because he did not suffer and die in the war, which ended seven
years before his birth. To assuage that guilt, he decides to retrace the
journey taken by two doomed members of his family: his grandfather, Alexander
Goldschmidt, and Alexander’s son, Helmut. This is a book about a harrowing trip,
or rather two of them – the one long ago and the one Goldsmith undertakes.
Alexander and Helmut were passengers aboard the MS St. Louis, which sailed from Hamburg in May 1939 bearing Jewish
refugees escaping from Nazi Germany. The world did not yet know all that was
going on in Hitler’s Third Reich, or at least was not yet galvanized against
it, and the ship, which headed for Havana, Cuba, was denied landing rights
there. So the 900 refugees journeyed to Canada and the United States – but were
refused admission by both countries and forced to return to Europe. World War
II had not yet begun – Hitler’s invasion of Poland did not occur until
September 1 – but the Nazi campaign against the Jews was gathering momentum,
and both Alexander and Helmut were caught up in it, sent to Auschwitz, and
eventually killed in the gas chambers there.

This was a tragedy of the
time – one among millions – and it is certainly comprehensible that Goldsmith
wants to understand it as part of his family history. His reasons for feeling
uncomfortable, even guilty, about his own solid and apparently happy life, are
harder to fathom. But they are the driving force behind the six-week journey
that Goldsmith takes through France, Germany and Poland, attempting to follow
the route of Alexander and Helmut and lay to rest, in his own mind, the ghosts
of these people he never knew. Goldsmith’s travels eventually take him,
intentionally and inevitably, to Auschwitz, a site that produces intense
emotion even among people who have no personal connection with it. The trip
then takes him, at the end, to his grandfather’s family home, where the
unveiling of a memorial plaque represents a triumph of sorts and provides
Goldsmith with the comfort he has been seeking. Alex’s Wake is unfailingly well-meaning, carefully researched and
skillfully written. It is clearly a work with considerable meaning for its
author and, by extension, for those who share a similar family history and
similar connections with the war. For other potential readers, though, it will
be curiously uninvolving. Those unfamiliar with the story of the MS St. Louis, which is not an especially
well-known one, will find some matters of interest here; those familiar with
the depredations of war in general and World War II in particular will find
confirmatory material aplenty – but no more than in many, many other books
about the war and its impact on families and the world as a whole. Alex’s Wake is a personal memoir that
makes little attempt to reach out to anyone who does not already share the
background that led Goldsmith to his quest – a self-limiting, self-limited work
that will have considerable meaning for a few readers but very little for many
others.